The present invention relates to the field of secure transmission of data from an electronic identity document to a terminal, and it relates more particularly to identifying such a terminal that has retransmitted such data in non-authorized manner.
The invention relates in particular, but in non-exclusive manner, to transmitting digital images stored, in an electronic identity document of the type, comprising an electronic passport, an electronic drivers license, a health card, or indeed an electronic signature card, for example.
In known manner, an electronic identity document, such as an electronic passport for example, may contain digital images that can be transmitted to a terminal suitable for processing such images. For example, during an identity check, the electronic identity document may transmit such a digital image to a first terminal in response to a request from the first terminal. In general, the digital image is transmitted to the terminal with the authorization of the proprietor of the electronic identity document. Nevertheless, once a digital image has been transmitted to said first terminal, the proprietor of the electronic identity document generally has no control over any subsequent use that the first terminal might make of the image. In particular, the proprietor of the electronic identity document cannot prevent the first terminal from subsequently distributing the digital image to non-authorized destinations. This lack of control thus poses a security problem relating to the digital image in question.
Under certain circumstances, the proprietor need not be the same as the physical bearer. Under such circumstances, the term “proprietor” may advantageously be replaced by the term “bearer”, it being understood that the bearer in question is the bearer of the electronic document, a usage that is frequent in specialized documentation.
By way of example, with electronic passports, it is important to be able to verify whether a digital image transmitted during an identity check is subsequently transmitted without authorization by the first terminal to some other terminal. This requirement for verification is particularly critical with digital images that constitute confidential information such as an identity photograph, or a biometric image (e.g. an image of a fingerprint or an image of an iris).
By way of information, the scientific article: “2008 The Institution of Engineering and Technology Pseudonymous mobile identity architecture based on government-supported PKI” by K. Hypponen et al. (lecture notes in computer science/computational science CHES 2008, Springer D E, vol. 4968 Mar. 1, 2008, pp 107-118, XP002544369) describes a conventional encryption/decryption method in which an encrypted image is transmitted from a first terminal to a second terminal, the method not making it possible to verify whether the digital image is distributed by the second terminal.
There therefore exists a need for a solution that makes it possible to be able to check effectively on any distribution that might be made by a terminal of an image provided by an electronic identity document (e.g. of the electronic passport or electronic drivers license type).